Keepers

by Brenda Cooper

Lou leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  At the doorway to the loop station, Imke paused and drew Coryn’s attention with a touch on her shoulder. “I’m going from here to Chicago. The route is still open, and I have to tell the mayor.”

  Startled, Coryn bit back a protest. She should have known. She took in a deep breath, adjusted. “Of course you are. Will you be able to tell if your EOCs are compromised?”

  “I know people who will.” Imke glanced down at their clothes. “But first, I’ll have to change. No one will recognize me looking so plain.”

  Coryn smiled.

  Imke took her hand and squeezed it. Their voice was husky as they said, “Stay safe. I’ll see you soon.”

  “You, too,” Coryn replied, a little lump in her throat.

  Eloise, Namina, and Coryn were the only three people in their pod. They took the front row. Namina sat beside Coryn, and Eloise across the aisle.

  As soon as they left, Eloise said, “You really need to be more careful. Inside, you can be as crazy as you want. You’re young. But Outside? Never, never draw attention.”

  Was Eloise still mad about the park lights? “Isn’t Spokane Metro a city?”

  “Not a megacity. It’s far more dangerous than Seacouver.”

  She didn’t like Eloise’s tone of voice, but she had to ask. “Why not?”

  “The city itself isn’t as sophisticated.”

  “What does that even mean?” Coryn asked. “Is ‘the city’ even an entity? Do you mean the systems aren’t as sophisticated?”

  Eloise turned toward Coryn, looking just condescending enough to get Coryn’s back up.

  Coryn continued. “Seacouver looks far more hacked than Spokane at the moment. All of the systems here work. The damned park lights worked.” She almost giggled. “Too well.”

  Eloise did not look amused. “You should not underestimate the dangers Outside.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Coryn snapped. When she heard her own tone of voice, she managed to get out a “sorry.”

  Eloise nodded but said nothing at all.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Coryn said into her silence. “We’re leaving anyway.”

  Eloise remained stoic, which made Coryn feel like Eloise thought she was stupid. But maybe she was just tired. And frightened. Nukes in the cities.

  She didn’t want to sleep, but she started to drift down anyway, half-dreaming of Lou standing on an ecobot’s back.

  Klaxons screamed at her, startling her awake. The brakes slammed on.

  Her body kept going forward. Her seatbelt dug into her shoulder and waist.

  Namina’s arm shot out and cushioned her head, protecting it from hitting the metal handrail in front of her.

  Eloise’s head smacked into the metal of the railing. She flopped back in the seat, bounced again, and moaned.

  The brakes kept screeching in Coryn’s ears.

  Oxygen masks flipped down from holes in the roof. Namina reached for one, but Coryn said, “Eloise,” and pulled the mask in front of her toward her mouth.

  Namina crossed to Eloise, her balance perfect even in the wildly slowing car.

  Coryn tightened the elastic band that held her oxygen mask on and gasped for breath, trying to control her hammering heart.

  She couldn’t tell if the mask was working, except that it must be since she was okay. She reached for her seatbelt buckle, but Namina looked up from Eloise’s side and said, “Not yet. Wait until we stop.”

  The whine of the brakes rose so high Coryn slapped her hands over her ears. After a final squeal, the car lurched to a halt, silent except for a hiss of escaping air.

  Namina walked backward, toward a panel marked as an emergency door. She threw it open and looked both ways. “Here!” she called.

  Coryn unbuckled, but the oxygen mask didn’t give her enough play to do more than just turn. She leaned down and shook Eloise, who huffed in a deep breath through the mask but didn’t open her eyes. Coryn’s voice shook. “She’s not okay.”

  “I know. I’ll carry her. Come here.”

  “Really?” She plucked at the elastic holding her mask on.

  “Take a breath,” Namina instructed patiently, “drop it, come back here, pick up this one. Besides, it’s not oxygen-free in here. Just low from depressurizing.”

  Of course.

  Namina’s instructions worked, and Coryn soon peered through the doorway that the robot had opened.

  “See that number on the wall?” Namina asked.

  “Fifteen? Followed by L?”

  “That means it’s fifteen yards left from here to the next doorway to the service access path. As long as the tube stays depressurized, the door to the service path will open.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “It will. You can hold your breath for fifteen yards. If you have to let air out and take some in, do it. There’s still fourteen percent oxygen in the air, but it could drop fast. As you get closer to the door, there will be more, since the air in the service path is from outside. You’ll be able to breathe there.”

  “Do you want me to open the door?”

  “No. I will go first. You follow. After you’re through, I’m going back for Eloise.”

  Coryn nodded. “Go. I’ll stay here.”

  Namina practically flowed through the thin space between the pod and the wall. She barely fit, and Coryn had the fleeting thought that they were lucky it was them. Shuska wouldn’t fit, and Lou would find it close.

  Namina pressed on the wall.

  Nothing.

  She kicked.

  Nothing.

  She stopped and stared, and kicked again, and her leg passed through the wall. Something clunked on the far side. She stepped through the doorway and moved whatever she had kicked through. Her head poked back into the corridor and she gestured to Coryn.

  Coryn took a deep breath and slid out sideways, nervous about leaving Eloise alone. She had to twist to get into the narrow passage. The claustrophobia made her want to gasp for breath. She used the palms of her hands to push away from the wall and stay upright, shuffling her feet, lurching. How had Namina moved through here gracefully?

  The opening seemed to be far more than fifteen yards away.

  She made it, blowing out a breath only as she felt Namina’s hands pull her through. She breathed in. Again.

  She met Namina’s eyes. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s only eighteen percent right here, which might make you less coordinated, but I think it will be normal after we leave this door.”

  Handy to have a walking sensor with you when you needed one.

  Something clattered from inside the pod.

  Namina turned and slid back through the doorway. She returned with Eloise over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, her arms swinging back and forth. “She stood up and ripped her mask off and then fell.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s probably dizzy. But she’s breathing. The inside of the car is no worse than the top of a mountain.”

  Blood stained Eloise’s hair, dripping onto the floor slowly. “Can you tell how badly she’s hurt?”

  Namina shook her head. “I had to move her anyway. Hopefully her spine is okay. If so, if we get back to the city safely, she should be fine.”

  “Then let’s go. I need to get this data back.”

  “Follow me.”

  “What if we run into whoever did this?”

  Some of Namina’s makeup had smeared, which made her a look a little more human and a little less like a robot. “The value in the attack is holding up loop traffic. There’s probably no one nearby who had anything to do with it.”

  Their mission mattered. “Shouldn’t I have the wristlet? Eloise can’t defend it, and you need to be free to defend Eloise.”

  Namina paused, cocking her head for a moment as if she were a curious dog. But then she laid Eloise down carefully. She tugged the wristlet out of Eloise’s front pocke
t, handing it to Coryn.

  It felt warm from Eloise’s body heat. Coryn closed her fingers around it and slid it into her own pocket. “What about other people? Was there anyone else on the train?”

  “If there was, by now they’re safely sipping oxygen or they’re dead. You said it yourself, we have to get the data to the city.”

  Coryn took a deep breath. “I don’t want to leave people to die.”

  “I’d have to breach the pods. That might make them worse off, or mean we have to move at the slowest speed of whoever is in them.”

  And right now, they could move at Coryn’s speed. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s go.” She turned and started off, fighting a wave of guilt. But the data on Paulette’s wristlet might save many more lives than they could save here.

  The service walkway was wider than the thin place they’d just had to sneak through. Coryn could jog, so she did.

  The tunnel had absolutely no natural or artificial light, but Namina handed her a handlight, which she used to illuminate the floor in front of them.

  From time to time they passed doors to the left just like the one Namina had kicked though, but there were no windows or doors that led out.

  The path felt endless.

  Their footsteps slid along the metal, their voices loud in the confined space even when they whispered. At least the seal was good and they didn’t have to contend with spiders or rats.

  Coryn wished for water, or an energy gel, but she had nothing. She just kept thinking about nukes and about Julianna and home and the need to keep moving as quickly as possible.

  The path began to slope down.

  Coryn managed to gasp out a question. “Why isn’t there a door?”

  “We’re underground here.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “The loop route goes through North Bend. I’m pretty sure that’s the exit. That might also be where the damage is, so if you see light, be careful.”

  Eloise coughed.

  “Wait!” Namina set Eloise down carefully and stood over her.

  Eloise coughed again and then put her hand to the top of her head. “My head hurts.”

  “We got in a wreck,” Coryn said.

  “On the loop?”

  “Tell me what our plans were,” Namina told her.

  “Were?” Eloise looked confused, but then she brightened and said, “We have to get the data to the city.”

  “Yes,” Coryn said. “I have it now. I’m not hurt, and as soon as we get out of here, I’ll run with it. Namina will stay with you.”

  Eloise looked uncertain.

  Coryn turned to Namina. “Is there water anywhere? She needs water.”

  “I know. My calculations suggest we are near the opening, and there will be water outside. We should keep going.”

  “What?” Eloise mumbled.

  “We don’t know what happened. The pods stopped. Sabotage, probably.”

  Eloise narrowed her eyes and managed a complete sentence. “Are you okay? You sound a little . . . I don’t know.”

  “I’m thirsty,” Coryn said. “I’m okay except for that. We’ve got to get out of here, and then I can run back to the city.”

  Eloise pushed herself up, but swayed and sat back down. “I can’t—” She held her hand out, and Coryn took it. Eloise rose, swayed, but this time kept her feet. Dried blood stuck in her tangled hair and a steak of it ran down her cheek. Her eyes looked like she was staring into bright light. She looked at Namina. “Aren’t there any emergency supplies?”

  “They were in the pods. We didn’t take one—I was in a hurry to get you out. It might have blown up. The train. We’re probably far past the train now.” Namina banged on the outside of the cylinder. “That’s empty.”

  Eloise nodded. “We’d best keep going.”

  Coryn started off, moving more slowly. Dehydration tugged at her, wanting her to stop and rest.

  A tall glass of water would be heaven.

  “Faster,” Namina said.

  Coryn glanced behind her; Namina had picked up Eloise again. The other woman’s face was the color of bone.

  The slope increased, taking them farther downhill. It began to feel warmer.

  Her head throbbed from dehydration and hunger. It hadn’t been that long since the accident or the sabotage or whatever. Maybe an hour. She hadn’t stopped to drink before they got on, and maybe not since they’d left Seacouver. Her focus had been on Lou. She’d been moving ever since.

  She kept going.

  After twenty more minutes, she spotted dull light ahead, more a softer shade of dark rather than a real light. She slowed.

  Namina mouthed, “Go on. There’s nobody there. Not unless it’s all robots.”

  Unlikely. Coryn crept forward.

  The dim, diffuse light brightened as she went. Some. It was the light of night, but still far brighter than the tunnel had been. They were taking a long and very slow curve and when they got far enough along, it was possible to see that they were about to run into a jagged hole in the loop infrastructure. Too bad they hadn’t been two minutes further ahead. They’d have been through the hole then, and already back in Seacouver now.

  “Turn your light off,” Namina said. “You wait. I’ll go.” She put Eloise back down and slid carefully and silently past Coryn, moving very slowly to the jagged edge.

  It held her weight without a jitter.

  She crawled the last few feet, leaning over the edge and looking down before she started back. When she reached Coryn and Eloise, she said, “There’s no one there. Not that I see.”

  And her senses would be good. Paula had been able to see heat as well as the things humans saw. She’d had better hearing, too. Namina was newer, and probably far more sensitive. “How high up are we?”

  “That’s the problem. Thirty feet or so. I’ll go down, and then you have to drop Eloise to me, carefully, and then you have to drop down to me.”

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Eloise woke as Namina picked her back up, and they explained the plan as they walked carefully toward the opening.

  When Coryn peered over the edge, the drop looked impossible. The tops of trees bristled below her. Coryn contemplated the jump. There were ragged edges to avoid. The pipe was essentially double walled. They had been walking through the space between the walls. The circle where the pod usually traveled looked bigger than she expected, the top of it far above them now that they had moonlight to see by. The outer circle that they were in was even bigger than that. A monstrosity of engineering.

  The break had dropped the once-continuous loop track into a jumble of sharp materials that had shattered trees. A few pieces of the tube had rolled partway down a slope before being stopped by cedars big enough to stop them.

  “That was a big explosion,” Eloise said.

  It seemed like some kind of rescue should be on the way. Drones or military or bots or something. But the scene was eerily quiet. An owl hooted, somewhere below them in the dark tree canopy. Another owl answered.

  Namina leaned over the edge, her balance looking precarious. She stared at the ground, probably seeing things Coryn couldn’t. “There’s some open ground. No rocks. Just a few saplings. To the right and ten feet out.” She glanced back at Coryn, and before Coryn could object, she continued. “I’m going. I’ll signal you with an extra loud hoot when I’m ready for you to help Eloise slide off.”

  Eloise nodded, looking completely unworried. She remained professional and inscrutable in spite of her bloodstained clothes and the bruise becoming evident on her right cheek even in the dark. Or maybe she was too out of it to be worried. It was hard to tell.

  Namina slid off of the ragged edge.

  Branches broke.

  An owl hoot floated up, loud but very, very natural.

  Was that real or Namina?

  The sound came again.

  Eloise nodded, scooting toward the side. “Push me,” she whispered.

  Coryn pushed, gently, with
a whispered, “Sorry.” She cringed.

  This time there was only a small crackle of branches and a light thud, followed by silence.

  The owl hooted again.

  Coryn took a deep breath and dropped.

  Strong hands caught her before she expected. Namina had jumped up to slow her fall. They landed together, hard, the impact jarring. Pain shuddered up from her heels and through her legs, but when she tried to move them, they worked. Nothing had broken.

  Coryn looked back up. They’d dropped about two stories. She glanced at Namina, “Thanks.”

  Eloise leaned on a tree, holding her head.

  “Water,” Coryn said. “You promised water.”

  Eloise wiped her bloody hand clean on her shirt and slipped it into her coat pocket. She pulled out a small container of white pills and an empty plastic sack. “Take this. It will purify water. I hear a stream.”

  “Wow. What else do you carry around?”

  Eloise smiled in spite of her obvious pain. “That’s for me to know.”

  Namina took the sack. “I’ll get it.” She slipped between two trees and was gone.

  Coryn checked her wristlet for news. The unconnected icon blinked on and off in the upper right face. There had been connectivity in the loop, but out here?

  Eloise whispered. “I can’t run. I can barely walk.”

  “I’ll leave you Namina.”

  “Maybe she should go with you.” Eloise slid down the tree trunk and groaned. “She’s harder to destroy.”

  Coryn glanced around. “You need her. I can’t send her on her own.”

  Eloise glared at her.

  Coryn was too tired to let Eloise’s attitude go, no matter how hurt she was. “Don’t go silent on me. You’re important to Julianna. So I’m not going to leave you out here by yourself.”

  Eloise’s face was only dimly lit, but a pale smile seemed to appear momentarily on her face. “Don’t fuck up.”

  “I won’t.”

  Namina came back with sack full of water. She started to hand it to Eloise, but Eloise waved it toward Coryn. “Coryn’s running. Water her first.”

  Coryn smiled. She wasn’t a dog. But she took the sack and tugged on the fat straw that stuck out of it. It did taste as much like heaven as she expected. She left some, but Eloise said, “Take it. Carry it with you. I have another sack. We’ll be okay.”